“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool” (As You Like It)

Category Archives: UK Politics

It’s hard to overstate the importance of “anti-imperialism” to the modern post-Leninist left. Their highest priority is to spread the word, and all kinds of moral gymnastics can be forgiven if they help to open public eyes to this not-so-obvious cause of all of the world’s problems.

It’s a touchstone. The most important argument to win. Their problem is that it’s also a tough argument to get across. For this reason, Israel is a godsend. It provides a useful, simple, parable that helps make the case for something that is a foundational belief to a political sect.

In this post, from 2007, I forecast that New Labour were in danger of begetting the current catastrophe. The article also predicted that the Lib-Dems would probably not go into coalition with Labour (and why), and readers may want to note the identity of the nightmare ‘back seat driver‘ that a mandated parliamentary party would be forced to take direction from….

The fact that we are using a referendum to decide this in the first place tells you all you need to know about how important ‘democracy’ is to the people who are asking us to decide the UK’s future in Europe.

I’ve written a piece for Left Foot Forward saying more-or-less this in more detail. You can read it here

I’ve written a four-part short essay with a personal view on why Labour got itself into its current difficulties, how it could have avoided it, and why this is a big issue either way (because this is very bad time to be complacent about democracy). They essay finishes with a look at what the opportunity is for Labour along with a contrast between the success of Bernie Sanders and the backward-steps of Corbynism

When some of us, back in August, said “putting Corbyn in charge of the Labour Party is like filling an ‘unleaded’ car with diesel”, this is what we meant. It actually won’t work. We weren’t trying to talk those voters out of something sensible. We were saying “this is bound to end in tears.”